Tuesday night in Dublin at 9pm, and you can barely swing a cat in the snappily titled ETTO on Merrion Place - we are lucky to get a table tonight.
The ETTO menu offers bar snacks and nibbles all priced under €5, some charcuterie at €7 and then small plates at between €10.00 and €11.00 and it's mostly from these we choose, though I do add in a large plate of lamb neck for myself, an act of spectacularly well chosen gluttony that I don't regret. A good bottle of New World Riesling from a very interesting list gets us settled.
Service is friendly but slow - it took over thirty minutes before any food arrived on the table and then lots arrived together - but it was worth the wait. Malfatti with brown butter and sage; crumbed pheasant and aioli; pork belly and smoked eel croquette - all were very very good. Those croquettes of pork belly caused a mini fork fight at the table as we silently realised we had only ordered one portion between the three of us. The Malfatti - roughly rolled Ricotta - is deliciously cheesy and buttery all at the same time. A venison carpaccio on toast was delicately cut but had a great punch of flavour, offset perfectly by some mustard cream.
We had also ordered a course of smoked cod's roe with fried pig skin but it never arrived - this and the slow service can be put down to opening glitches that bedevil every new restaurant. That 'large' plate of lamb neck with swede dumplings and roasted onions promised great things - indeed the couple at the table next to us got visibly excited on hearing I had ordered it – one of them had just finished it and they assured me I wouldn't be disappointed. I wasn't. It's unctuous texture and deep flavour was as close to perfection as it gets for me.
A single dessert of Quatre Quart cake with roasted apple and vanilla was deliciously simple and sweet and devoured without invitation by my two companions. Dublin seems to be enjoying something of a golden age for restaurant openings at the moment – Cleaver East, Super Miss Sue and Forest Avenue to name a few – and ETTO joins them in adding some great new cooking to the capital.
ETTO, Merrion Row, D2 01 678 8872
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